Pauline
Beard (email: beardp1@pacificu.edu),
an Associate Professor of English at Pacific University in Oregon, has spoken
at two JASNA AGMS, and is Regional Co-coordinator for Oregon/Washington. She is the author of a book on the modern
novel, and a book on teaching Jane Austen is in progress.

By the bye, as I must leave off being
young, I find many Douceurs in being a sort of Chaperon for I am put on the Sofa
near the Fire & can drink as much wine as I like.(6 November 1813)

As an English woman who has had to leave
off being young herself, teaching Jane Austen in America has given me far more
appreciation for her works.I respect
not only the writing but also the nuances of the social critique in the Austen
novels because I begin to see them through new eyes. For example, one student, many years ago, suggested that Fanny
Price in Mansfield Park would become
another Lady Bertram, debilitated, taking no exercise, drinking tea or wine,
lounging on the sofa. This contention started
a wide-ranging discussion resulting in the conclusion that Fanny had hidden
depths and a moral integrity that Lady Bertram could never attain, and raising
questions that have lingered with me for years: What is up with Lady Bertram anyway? Is she sick? And what were
upper class women like her doing in America at the time?

Lady Bertram is not ill. She is not a hypochondriac like Emma’s father,
Mr. Woodhouse, nor a neurasthenic like Elizabeth’s mother, Mrs. Bennet.She is not the sad near-paralyzed figure of
Mrs. Smith in Persuasion, but she is
certainly debilitated, consistently depicted loafing on the sofa, snoozing,
dozing, half asleep. The character’s
general indolence and yet the way that all the other family members kowtow to
her and absolve her of any the responsibilities of a mother, led me to
researching debility in general, and, because of my new interests, in America
in particular, at a roughly equivalent time to Jane Austen’s writing of Mansfield Park. The valuable advice of an American History
colleague led me to Stephen Nissenbaum’s book Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America, a study of the work
of Sylvester Graham and Health Reform. Nissenbaum
recognizes Graham as “the first writer to formulate a coherent physiological
analysis of the various new anxieties about the human body that had emerged by
the 1830s” in America (ix).

Linking Graham’s theories with health
movements such as “vegetarianism, phrenology and water cure, in addition to
sexual reform” (ix), Nissenbaum lays out the crux of Graham’s work that “stimulation led to debility” (x,
emphasis Nissenbaum’s), as opposed to the accepted view that debility was
caused by too little stimulation (x). Such
a theory related to Lady Bertram throws a whole new light on her sofa lounging.
Over-stimulated by sexual activity in
the past, Lady Bertram’s system has been undermined and debilitated; as a
result, in her older, possibly menopausal years, she is capable only of lying
on the sofa and caring for her lapdog, rather than fulfilling her central duty as
responsible mother. Despite her
abrogation of duty, Lady Bertram wields an intriguing power over all around
her, and in a technical sense furthers character and plot development.

A brief overview of Graham’s theories
will help us understand such an idea for such an unexcitable character. Born in New England in 1794, Sylvester Graham
lived in the same era as the American health and sexual reformers, John Harvey
Kellogg, William Andrus Alcott, and Mary Gove Nichols, an era filled with an
ever-increasing awareness of the body and the way sexuality functioned in the
human experience. Graham especially
linked debility in young men to alcohol and excessive sexual activity. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, however,debility and stimulation were seen as opposites and as
mutually exclusive (Nissenbaum 20). Debility
was regarded as far more dangerous than excitability, and artificial stimulation,
such as drugs and alcohol, became the prescribed antidote (20). In Philadelphia, the center for the
Temperance Movement in the 1820s, Benjamin Rush, who began his work in 1785,
was convinced that artificial stimulation was the cause not the cure for debility.
Indeed alcohol and meat, especially red
meat, served to weaken the debilitated person (20). Following Rush’s lead and the beliefs of the French doctors Xavier
Bichat (1771-1802) and Francois Broussais (1772-1838), Graham recognized that
the digestive system is in constant battle between organic and inorganic forces
(20). The brain and genital organs
exert a reciprocal influence (105), explaining why insanity is often attended
with excessive sexual desire (one has only to recall Ophelia’s lewd singing in
her “mad scene” to see some reasoning behind such a viewpoint).

According to Graham and his believers,
sexual desire then affects every organ in the body—increased blood rushes to
the brain, stomach and lungs. The
effect on the stomach is particularly dangerous, according to Graham, producing
a “general sense of languor.” The
effect on the Heart produces a circulation feeble and “languid” (Graham, qtd.
in Nissenbaum107)—words very similar to those found in the descriptions of Lady
Bertram. Excess alcohol and venery
caused diseases of various descriptions, but all needed to have the body system
calmed and controlled. Instead of
prescribing harsh stimulants, Rush called for “measures that promised to soothe
and relieve excitement: measures such as reduced diet, controlled regimen,
purges, and—especially—bloodletting” (Nissenbaum 56). Thus, many of the historical documents of the
eighteenth century, in America and Europe, relate the application of leeches
(favored by Broussais) or incisions (favored by Rush) for the draining of
blood, to calm the circulation and ease the disease.

Sexual stimulation at its worst,
“venereal excess” in Graham’s terms, even in marital sex, pumps more blood into
the already debilitated lungs, rupturing the vessels, resulting in the “gushing
of blood from mouth and nostrils” (Graham, qtd. in Nissenbaum 110). In his “Lecture on Cholera” published in 1839,
Graham describes the progression of the disease in those already debilitated by
sexual excitement and drained of nervous energy, concluding with:“There follows a period of ‘violent vomiting
and purgation,’” during which “all the muscles of voluntary and involuntary
motion [are] thrown into the most violent and painful spasms and convulsions”
(qtd. in Nissenbaum 110). One thinks of
Tom’s graphic vomiting scene in Patricia Rozema’s film of Mansfield Park, after he returns to Mansfield Park, deserted by his
high-society friends. In the novel
Austen never names Tom’s illness, but it is brought on by a bout of drinking
and excess, in Newmarket (426). Seen
through the lens of Graham’s theory, Tom’s body is reacting to years of excess,
in alcohol and no doubt venery. Austen
reveals early in the novel when Tom is only 22 that he is a wastrel. His extravagance has ruined half of Edmund’s
rightful portion; as a result the “younger brother must help to pay for the
pleasures of the elder” (23). The use
of the word “pleasures” suggests something other than running up huge bills for
horses and the services of tailors.

Henry Crawford can be interpreted in
Graham’s terms as one who has also allowed sexual excess and “pleasures” to
cause the mind to become “exceedingly carnal.” Again following Graham’s theory, for such a man “sex itself has
become the only object of attention: his imagination is constantly filled with
lewd and obscene images” (Graham, qtd. in Nissenbaum 109). If such characterization of the charming
Henry seems harsh, consider his dalliance with Maria and Julia, his comments on
engaged women (45), and his plans to make Fanny fall in love with him (229). Even his sister sees that he must be having “‘a
somebody’” (230), and in language suggesting the sexual act rather than playing
at being in love, she hopes for Fanny that Henry will not “‘plunge her deep’”
in love (231). She sees his “‘idleness
and folly’” (230), the latter a word that will resonate later in the novel when
Henry absconds with Maria. Fanny
quickly recognizes Henry’s “‘corrupted mind’” (225), and Edmund ultimately
acknowledges Miss Crawford’s “‘faults of principle, . . . of blunted
delicacy and a corrupted, vitiated mind’” (456). Both brother and sister have been corrupted by an uncle whose
marriage had been unpleasant, “a man of vicious conduct,” who brought his
mistress into the house upon his wife’s death (41). In Graham’s terms, both young people have been ruined by seeing if
not experiencing venereal excess. If
not unchaste physically, they are mentally so, as witnessed by Mary Crawford’s
lewd punning on “‘Rears, and Vices’” (60).

Having lectured and written on his
theories in Lectures on the Science of
Human Life (1839) and Lecture to
Young Men on Chastity (1837), what were the steps Graham suggested for
healing the digestive and nervous system destroyed by excess stimulation? Sounding as if transposed to our own
back-to-nature, bio-dynamically aware society, Graham made cogent pleas for a
return to whole grains, to the bread made from whole wheat as the pioneers
would have made it: flour milled at
home, not over-processed and made in vast quantities in the way the newly
industrialized bakers were producing their breads. This stricture meant of course the return to the role of the
mother as the sole maker of the bread, nurturing her family, within the home,
not relying on outside industrialized sources. As Graham reminisces:

Who that can look back 30 or 40 years to
those blessed days of New England’s prosperity and happiness [1800], when our
good mothers used to make the family bread, but can well remember how long and
how patient those excellent matrons stood over their bread troughs, kneading
and molding their dough? (Graham, Science 448-49)

The
role of women, in Graham’s vision, is thus restricted as it was in the
eighteenth century, pulling her back to the inner sphere of the home, to the
central role of the all-nurturing mother.

Alice Stockham, writing in the late nineteenth
century directly mentions Graham Bread and its good effects on the digestive
tract, concentrating on this pivotal maternal role in her work Tokology.The book is truly a “manual of midwifery,” its name derived from
the Greek (Tokos meaning childbirth, Logos meaning discourse [Stockham 358]).Discussing a child’s digestive health with
the mother, Stockham encourages the use of Graham bread and cracked wheat (65).
The mother cooks the unprocessed wheat,
feeds the child, the child’s digestion improves, and the mother’s role as
nurturer is firmly established.Both
Graham and Stockham place the mother at the center of the home, promoting the
premise of unprocessed food and healthy outdoor exercise without the stimulants
of tea, coffee or alcohol—or excess sexual activity.

In America, during this Jacksonian era,
much of the belief in teetotalism, vegetarianism, and chastity, stemmed from
Graham. Although the idea of Graham
Bread is no doubt intrinsically part of our whole-wheat artisan breads today,
the one remnant of his baking ideals to come down to the present age is Graham
Crackers, so desired of children and lovers of cheesecake crusts.1In England, thirty years before Graham set
forth his theories in lectures, Austen may well have read about or at least
heard of similar premises, the most notable of these from John Wesley’s Primitive Physick(1774) and William Buchan’s Domestic Medicine (1769). Certainly in her novels, Austen deals overtly
with diet and exercise; covertly, with references to elopements and affairs and
illegitimate children, she adroitly points out the sexual mores of her time.

After this necessarily brief overview of
the Graham theories, an investigation of Austen women who are the direct
opposite of Lady Bertram will first test his premise. In contrast to Lady Bertram’s ennui, Miss
Bates in Emma of course springs to
mind as the aged spinster whose garrulousness and seemingly constant motion perhaps
replace the lack of sexual activity in her narrowly straightened life. Miss Diana Parker in Sanditon is of course indefatigable, described as “walking nimbly”
(406), “posting over the Down after a House for this Lady whom she had never
seen, & who had never employed her” (413). Because women are “‘not all born to equal Energy’” Diane Parker
puts all her energies into looking after “‘helpless Invalides’” (409),
concocting bitters, several phials of which, in one evening, Miss Parker dips
into when the smelling salts are not in her hand (413). These sisters both are sexually inactive, one
bustling about dosing the other with stimulants that further debilitate her.

How does Graham’s theory apply to
Austen’s married women—especially to women without children, the outward sign
of sexual activity in the bedroom? They
all seem to be rushing about interfering in other, single women’s lives. Newly married Mrs. Elton in Emma is a whirlwind of busy-bodying,
nearly ruining the happiness of Jane Fairfax. One suspects little activity in that bedroom with her “‘caro
sposo.’”
Widowed and childless, Lady Russell has
tried to replace Anne Elliot’s mother in Persuasion
but comes close to wrecking Anne’s prospects with her interfering. Mrs. Croft seems to be the only childless
married woman who achieves a pleasant balance of bustle and spirit with love
for and comradeship with the Admiral—or could one argue that with her care and
consideration for the Admiral, going with him on all his sea adventures, he is
her “child” and she the mother, not the sexual partner?

Finally, we come
to the married childless women in Mansfield
Park, Mrs. Grant and Mrs. Norris. Mrs.
Grant, described as being one “to love and be loved” (469), is clearly not
being sexually loved enough. Her
husband, Dr. Grant, an “indolent, stay at-home man” with a penchant for
“drinking claret every day” (47), seems to prefer eating to any other activity,
and his wife panders to her husband’s fondness for food, especially “butter and
eggs” (31). The narrator tells us that
“having by this time run through the usual resources of ladies residing in the
country without a family of children; having more than filled her favourite
sitting-room with pretty furniture, and made a choice collection of plants and poultry,
[Mrs. Grant] was very much in want of some variety at home” (41).For “variety,” one could read sexual
activity sadly lacking in Mrs. Grant’s life, and her energy and liveliness show
the very real need of other activity to fill that void. When Dr. Grant dies of apoplexy brought on by
“three great institutionary dinners in one week” (469), the void is filled
(perhaps) by living with her half-sister, the morally bankrupt Mary Crawford.

If we accept for the time being Graham’s
premise, the lack of sexual stimulation also applies to Mrs. Norris’s marriage.
Unlike both her sisters, she has no
children, and her husband is depicted in “an indifferent state of health,”
suffering from “gouty complaints” (9). As gout was, and in some circles still is, considered an illness
resulting from rich food, lobster, red meats, sweetbreads, and fortified wines
such as port and Madeira, Mr. Norris, in Graham’s terminology seems to be
ruining his body with a type of stimulation other than sexual: rich food and alcohol. Disappointed in the marriage, and the
lower-than-expected income it has provided, Mrs. Norris exerts her energies
toward saving money; indeed “her love of money [is] equal to her love of
directing” (8). This wife and soon to
be widow is left unstimulated, continuing her life in a “spirit of activity”
(4).The body’s nervous energy directs
itself into other people’s lives with disastrous effects.

So, we turn to Lady Bertram: lover or loafer? Following Graham’s theories, one could argue that in the past the
lovely young woman who “captivate[d]” Sir Thomas Bertram (3) has been sexually
stimulated to such an extent that, four children later and in middle age, her
nervous and digestive systems are so disrupted that she exists in an automaton-like
state. The use of the word “captivate”
rather than the more mercenary “capture” suggests that Sir Thomas, very much
like Mr. Bennet in Pride and Prejudice, has been infatuated with this pretty woman. Since Lady Bertram is described as “a woman
of very tranquil feelings, and a temper remarkably easy and indolent” (4), it
is somewhat surprising that at certain times a close understanding is revealed
between husband and wife. Obviously
behind the scenes, perhaps in the bedroom, the baronet and his lady have discussed
whether Fanny will stay first at Mansfield Park or with Mrs. Norris. When Lady Bertram’s “calm inquiry” reveals
Mrs. Norris’s true intent of never having Fanny stay with her, Lady Bertram’s
reply with “utmost composure” shows that she does not feel the need to consult
her husband on this score. “After a
short pause,” Sir Thomas “with dignity” concurs with his wife (9). This somewhat unexpected agreement possibly results
from the power Lady Bertram exerts in the bedroom. If the woman is sexually stimulating for the male, according to
the Graham theorists, she can wield control over his desires, determining when
and how many times sexual activity will take place. Thus even though Graham himself believed that marriage can be a
soothing device to cut down on excess sexuality—“Marital sex was not as
exciting as non-marital sex” (Graham Chastity
71)—an exciting, sexually active wife could in fact break down the traditional
hegemony of the husband. Sexual
intercourse then becomes a tool for power. As Grahamite Orson S. Fowler suggested,
the woman becomes “the final umpire in the bedroom” (Nissenbaum xi).

Such an interpretation puts a different
spin on the traditional vision of Lady Bertram as simply the stock aristocratic
figure of fun in the novel. One begins
to suspect that she knows more than she lets on. Behind the scenes, the husband and wife obviously talk about Fanny’s
living with Mrs. Norris after the gouty man’s death, and Lady Bertram brings
“the matter to a certainty,” raising the question “carelessly” (28). When Mrs. Norris pleads poverty in her
refusal, her sister knows exactly how much Mrs. Norris has a year.When Mrs. Norris hopes that she can “‘lay by
a little at the end of the year,’” her sister replies, “‘I dare say you will.
You always do, don’t you?’” (30). Further,
when Mrs. Norris claims her worry over Sir Thomas’s plantations in Antigua,
Lady Bertram is up on that matter also: “‘Oh! that will soon be
settled. Sir Thomas has been writing about it, I know’” (30). Clearly Sir Thomas shares not only his bed
but also his thoughts and business worries with this seemingly “air headed”
spouse.

That Lady Bertram is a figure of fun is
true:she does not like exercise (36);
she must ask advice of Sir Thomas if she can do without Fanny (217); she cannot
recall the name of Shakespeare for the playwright of the play that Fanny has
been reading (336). In some scenes,
however, she acts as a subtle guide for the reader for certain aspects of the
other characters being developed. For
example, in the Shakespeare reading scene, she shows perspicuity when despite
her “incompetency and languor” she declares, “‘You have a great turn for
acting, I am sure, Mr. Crawford’” (338). Knowing that Henry is in fact acting a role throughout the novel,
the reader can read volumes into this line, which means even more coming from a
character who is not vigilant enough in observing those around her.

This lack of vigilance is crucial in the
outcome of many of the characters in the novel, and in the direction of the
plot. For example, her role furthers
the plans of Henry Crawford as he sets out to make Fanny Price fall in love
with him (229). A “quiet mother” (48),
considered no more than a “‘cipher’” in the house (162), “a trifle, for she
might always be considered as only half awake” (343)—a neglectful sleeping aunt
is perfect for his strategies to be alone with Fanny. When Henry believes he
really is in love with Fanny, the neglectful aunt/chaperone enables him to
pursue his attentions, what the narrator refers to as a “thorough attack” (342)
in only slightly veiled sexual terms. The
stock figure of fun and the lassitude of the upper classes are perfectly
described when Henry enters the room and finds Lady Bertram “on the very point
of quitting it as he entered. She was
almost at the door, and not chusing by any means to take so much trouble in
vain, she still went on.” Henry is
“overjoyed to have her go” (298). A
funny scene, yes, but the neglect of the role of chaperone, in the absence of
the mother to fulfill this role, aids Henry in his “attack” on Fanny. The word is used again when Mary Crawford
approaches Fanny to persuade her of her brother’s cause. Perhaps instinctively knowing what role her
Aunt Bertram should be playing, Fanny
“absents herself as little as possible from Lady Bertram. . . . She
succeeded. She was safe in the
breakfast-room with her aunt . . .” (357, emphasis mine).

When the news of Henry’s proposal reaches Lady
Bertram, however, she does not see the danger behind it, only the advantage.The woman’s debilitated, automaton-like state has made her totally
irresponsible in the guidance of Fanny.As
if to signal the total lack of awareness, in this scene Austen gives Lady
Bertram her longest speech, preceded by a crucial description:“She had been a beauty, and a prosperous beauty, all her life; and
beauty and wealth were all that excited her respect” (332).Lady Bertram knows “something like impatience, to be alone with
[Fanny], and her countenance, as she spoke, had extraordinary animation”
(332-33).The outcome of her speech
to Fanny is a recommendation to accept Henry’s offer, as “‘it is every
young woman’s duty to accept such a very unexceptionable offer as this.’”The narrator immediately underlines the lack of care this
aunt has afforded:“This was
almost the only rule of conduct, the only piece of advice, which Fanny had
received from her aunt in the course of eight years and a half” (333).

The most crucial example of the lack of
care in Lady Bertram occurs when she should be paying attention to her family’s
decision to perform the sexually risqué play Lovers’ Vows. In Sir
Thomas’s absence, she should be the one to order the conduct of the household,
to act the central role of mother in the sense of guidance and nurture. At a crucial point, as the two brothers argue
the morality of acting in the home, Lady Bertram is described as “sunk back in
one corner of the sofa, the picture of health, wealth, ease, and tranquillity,
. . . just falling into a gentle doze” (126). This picture of good health and ease negates
Graham’s position, but the general dis-ease of the character—it is not natural
for a healthy woman to be so lethargic—leaves her family vulnerable. The central role of the play has been well
documented, but Lady Bertram’s role in the development of the play’s importance
has not, mainly because of the “presence of absence.”She is either physically absent—not even mentioned in the pages
telling of the play—or mentally—as in the line above. Her one injunction to Maria—“‘Do not act any thing
improper, my dear. . . . Sir Thomas would not like it”—is quickly
followed by “‘I must have my dinner’” (140-41). (Sylvester Graham would draw many dietary conclusions from this
statement: the digestive system ruined
by the over stimulation of the sexual organs!) Not appearing physically for 26 pages (141-67), Lady Bertram then
claims that when she is “‘a little more at leisure’” (167), supposedly
believing herself overwhelmed by all the little sewing of fringes she indulges in,
she will attend a rehearsal. She has no
idea what the play is about. Of course,
well aware of the play’s questionable nature, Mrs. Norris adroitly stops her
sister from attending the rehearsal the following evening, and Lady Bertram is
“quite resigned to waiting” (167).

Austen, cleverly reversing the role of
observer and moral guardian of the house during Sir Thomas’s absence, shows
Fanny as the one who knows that the play is wrong, morally and spiritually, for
the family.Unlike the mistress of the
house, however, Fanny can do nothing about it. Fanny is the one who reads the play and is shocked at its contents
of illegitimacy and seduction, how improper it is (137).She hears the outrageous question from Miss
Crawford: “‘Who is to be Anhalt? What gentleman among you am I to have the
pleasure of making love to?’” (143).She
witnesses the sexuality in the acting between Henry Crawford and Maria Bertram
(165), and the jealousy of Julia for Maria (160). In a consummate summary paragraph of the events of the play’s
effects, Austen describes all those at fault; the absence of the one who could
and should have stopped the play is highlighted in the explanation:“[t]he inattention of the two brothers and the aunt” (163 emphasis mine). There are not two aunts involved in
monitoring the play, only one, Mrs. Norris, who is so busy interfering in every
little monetary detail that she fails in “watching the behaviour, or guarding
the happiness of [Sir Thomas’s] daughters” (163).

Ironically, having totally disregarded
her daughters’ and Fanny’s welfare during her husband’s absence, Lady Bertram
is the one to reveal, when he returns, that the household has been taken over
by a play. Patricia Rozema’s film of Mansfield Park shows the amazing
reaction to Sir Thomas’s return; in fact, Rozema’s voiceover commentary,
picking up on mere nuances in the novel, reveals what she clearly sees as the
true Lady Bertram. With the noisy
actors in the background, as Lady Bertram wakes from a deep doze and stretches
out her warm, rosy arms lasciviously, saying she could not have borne his
absence another moment, Rozema states, “Ever the sensualist.” Austen’s text does indeed reveal the
happiness of the wife; if not quite sensual, she is “so warmed by his sudden
arrival, as to place her nearer agitation than she had been for the last twenty
years.”She “move[s] Pug from her side,
and give[s] all her attention and all the rest of her sofa to her husband.”She is “almost
fluttered for a few minutes” (179, emphasis Austen’s). If we return for a moment to Graham’s
theories, the sexuality of the marital relations has been rekindled, returning
to the first excitement of Lady Bertram’s marriage, before the birth of Tom.

The automaton becomes animated; Lady
Bertram is present, physically and mentally, and “in the elation of her spirits
. . . [becomes] talkative” (181), chatting to Sir Thomas of the
play-acting, with the hilarious statement: “‘We have been all alive
with acting’” (181, emphasis mine). In
a very telling moment Tom explains that the play was a means of amusing his
mother (181), intuitively reasoning that indeed Sir Thomas would be pleased to
hear that his lady had been entertained in his absence.The rest, as the cliché goes, is history. The moral corruption of the play is cleansed
from the house with Sir Thomas burning all the copies, and Henry Crawford
removing to Bath. Life at Mansfield
Park returns to the peace and tranquility so beloved of its master and mistress,
perhaps because they both have each other and other activities to occupy them
in their private rooms.

One might wonder about the accuracy of
Sylvester Graham’s theory applied to the long absence of Sir Thomas and Lady
Bertram’s increased debility during this crucial time. Mrs. Grant sees her more of a cipher than
before he went away (162). I see her
nervous system as disturbed and weakened by the sexual activity of the past,
and her whole persona, initially described as “guided in every thing important
by Sir Thomas” (20) now destroyed. One
could parallel the deterioration to that of a drug removed and the addict’s
dependence intensified. The central
role of mother is abrogated.

A significant parallel is that of Lady
Bertram to her sister in Portsmouth, the original Fanny Ward, burdened by nine
children in eleven years, severely neglecting the role of mother, especially to
her daughters: “she had neither leisure
nor affection to bestow on Fanny. Her
daughters never had been much to her. She
was fond of her sons, especially of William . . .” (389). In the voiceover commentary to her film version
of the novel, Rozema picks up the cue of the parallels between the two sisters,
in persona and looks, by choosing the same actress to play both parts. The Austen text tells us that indeed Mrs.
Price looked like her sister, and was of the same disposition, “naturally easy
and indolent” (390), but her situation, clearly sexually stimulated in the past
and now overcome by the present poverty has intensified the languor.

In an uncharacteristically cruel passage,
Austen describes Fanny’s judgment of Mrs. Price as “a dawdle, a slattern,” who
had no inclination for getting to know her daughter better or even
understanding her feelings (390). Her
voice “resembled the soft monotony of Lady Bertram’s, only worn into
fretfulness” (392). Whereas Lady
Bertram’s natural disposition is weakened by the stimulation of Sir Thomas’s
sexual attentions over the years, by the good living and no doubt the fine
wines and spirits (shown in the film of course as laudanum), Mrs. Price is
similarly worn down by sexuality, plus frequent childbirth, poor food, and the
inability to run her rowdy, filthy household with only two slovenly housemaids.
She would loaf on a sofa if one existed
in her poverty-stricken home, but as it is she seems in constant useless but
languid motion, fretting over the housemaids who are completely out of her
control. In a novel that holds up for
scrutiny various types of marriages, that of Frances Price prompts Fanny to
adapt Dr. Johnson’s famous aphorism: “though
Mansfield Park might have some pains, Portsmouth could have no pleasures”
(392).

Whereas Sir Thomas panders to his wife’s
every whim, enabling her loafing role, and in Graham’s terms paradoxically
stimulating the lover’s debility, Mr. Price is a wastrel, disabled for active
service from the navy but able enough to be out of the house, obsessively
watching the ships, and over the years developing into a vulgar,
prone-to-violence drunkard. His
drunkenness is accompanied by vulgarity: “he swore and he drank, he was dirty and gross” (389). In Graham’s terms again, sexual excess has
caused the mind to become carnal. For
such a man “Almost every object he looks at takes on sexual associations.
. . . ‘[H]is eye can scarcely fall . . . on the sexual parts
of any female animal, without awakening a train of obscene thoughts’” (qtd. in
Nissenbaum 109). Fanny recalls no
tenderness to herself, “only a general impression of roughness and loudness”
(389). In Portsmouth Fanny’s father “scarcely
ever notice[s] her, but to make her the object of a coarse joke” (389)—one can
only guess at the sexual nature of those jokes. In Sylvester Graham’s view, Mr. Price epitomizes a system gone
horrifyingly wrong, under the influence of heavy spirits, excessive venery and
excess in marital sexuality.

The Portsmouth poverty highlights the
difference in the two mothers, each destructive in her own way, each neglecting
the vital central role of the caring, nurturing mother. However, as Fanny yearns for Mansfield Park
as her true home, she (as well as this reader) warms to Lady Bertram. Lady Bertram’s role in the direction of the
novel now takes an interesting turn. The
letters sent between niece and aunt not only fill in the details of the events
at Mansfield Park now that Fanny is no longer the calm observer, they also push
the plot forward. The aunt’s chatty
letters keep Fanny abreast of the events at “home” and, though full of
trivialities at first—“very little matter
was enough for her” (425)—they become vital to Fanny (395). Almost imperceptibly, the aunt replaces the
mother; Edmund’s letters give the outside view of his mother who “‘desires her
best love [be sent], and . . . talks of [Fanny] almost every hour’”
(423). Fanny has moved from being the
constant companion, fetching and carrying and interminably sewing, to the
daughter whom Lady Bertram longs for to comfort her, not to serve her (427).

As if acknowledging the shift in role for
Lady Bertram, the narrator supplies an insight into the “back-story” of this character,
a passage worth quoting in full:

Lady Bertram rather shone in the
epistolary line, having early in her marriage, from the want of other
employment, and the circumstance of Sir Thomas’s being in Parliament, got into
the way of making and keeping correspondents, and formed for herself a very
creditable, common-place, amplifying style. . . . (425)

One
sees the young bride, estranged from one sister, dominated by another, filling
tedious lonely hours writing letters—no doubt to women friends in similar
circumstances—a tiny image that serves to give a psychological explanation for
the character’s behavior.In her study
of Victorian women, Disorderly Conduct, Carroll
Smith-Rosenberg deals with the vast amount of letters in her sample written by
women in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, “turning to one another for
comfort,” forging bonds “often physical as well as emotional” (71). The collection of Austen’s own letters shows
how many of her hours were filled with letter writing, and in MansfieldPark, despite the narrator’s self-deprecating suggestion that
females have little to say in letters (425), the sequence between Fanny and
Lady Bertram regarding Tom’s near fatal illness shows the growing bond between
the two. The following line demonstrates
the turn-around in the relationship: “Her
aunt did not neglect her; she wrote again and again” (427). She may still be loafing on the sofa, but she
is at least doing something of value. When
Lady Bertram stops “playing at being frightened” over Tom’s illness, her letter
is “finished in a different style, in the language of real feeling and alarm” (427, emphasis mine). Shaken from her torpor, the aunt is now
feeling strong emotions, other than those of sexuality, perhaps the first pangs
of motherly love for some very long time, writing of “her daily terrors to her
niece, who might now be said to live upon letters” (428).

Suffering as if a daughter, Fanny longs
to be home to comfort her Aunt Bertram, who has been protected from the true
nature of Tom’s illness so that, typically, she not be “harassed by alarms”
(429). When Maria’s disgrace is known,
then Fanny takes her place as daughter, received back at Mansfield Park because
of Sir Thomas’s anxiety for Lady Bertram (442). Significantly, Lady Bertram moves from the drawing room “with no
indolent step,” showing emotion, welcoming Fanny back as a comfort to her
(447). Emotionally stirred now as
rarely before, Lady Bertram in the role of mother moves into another sphere,
showing the change in her character and at the same time revealing the past
history of Maria and Henry’s affair. Lady
Bertram is again sleeping (no doubt on the sofa), but this time “after hearing an
affecting sermon, [she has] cried herself to sleep” (453). Her “absence,” in this instance caused
emotionally, not catatonically, allows time for Edmund to tell Fanny the
shocking story of Mary Crawford’s response to Henry’s “‘folly,’” that “‘it was the
detection, not the offence which she reprobated’” (455). Moreover, Fanny can now reveal the real
interest Miss Crawford took in the older brother’s illness (459). Only “Lady Bertram’s rousing thoroughly up” (459)—notice
the different type of energy here—finishes the conversation of four pages’
duration; the gap is filled, and the reader made well aware of Edmund’s state
of mind and Fanny’s place as friend in his heart.

The figure of the aristocratic automaton—lethargic,indolent—follows throughout literary
history: the faded relatives of Sir Leicester
Dedlock in Bleak House; James Harthouse
in Hard Times; even the new
aristocracy, Daisy and Tom Buchanan, the careless people in The Great Gatsby, to name only a few. They all reflect selfishness and sensuality—in
Graham’s theory, the excess of stimulation that has led to debility in the upper
classes. The question, “What is up with
Lady Bertram?” cannot perhaps be fully answered by a theory developed in the
decades after Austen, and on another continent. What Austen does achieve, however, is the delineation of a certain
literary type, or stock character, that Graham’s later theory explains or even
validates.

As an acute observer of human beings with
all their failings and strengths in whichever class, Austen’s “types” have made
her the consummate craftsperson of her century. What distinguishes Austen’s loafing lover is her subtle role in directing
certain aspects of the novel’s characterizations and the movement of the plot. Without Lady Bertram’s abrogation of the role
of dutiful mother, the play would never have been considered; without her
sleeping at opportune moments, the story would never have been pushed forward,
nor back-stories and narrative gaps filled in. As to what women like Lady Bertram were doing in America at the
time, perhaps Mary Gove Nichols might have the answer. A Grahamite, she came to reject the “sexual
slavery” of marriage, encouraging women to exercise “the freedom to refuse to
submit to the sexual requirements of marriage” (Nissenbaum 167-69)—perhaps Lady
Bertram and Frances Price might well agree with her.

NOTE

1.Graham died in 1851 at the age of 57.Ironically, in his last months, in order to
recover energy and overcome debility, he “resorted to taking liquor and meat in
a last desperate attempt to recover his health” (Nissenbaum 15) but it was too
late.The regime of abstinence from
animal meats and alcohol, and preservation of the semen—“the minimal consumption of food and minimal expenditure of semen” (xi,
italics Nissenbaum’s)—proved unsuccessful in the founder’s case. His physician
could find nothing seriously wrong with the organs, attributing Graham’s death
to the “somewhat irregular life” he had been living (Trall 110).